WASHINGTON — While NASA seeks to keep up an uninterrupted human presence in low Earth orbit, an agency official said a short-term gap between the International Space Station and industrial successors wouldn’t be “the tip of the world.”
NASA’s current approach to its future in LEO counts on supporting development of business space stations with the goal of getting not less than one such station able to support NASA astronauts and research by 2030, when the ISS is scheduled for retirement. A key query, though, can be whether any of the several firms working on such concepts can be ready by the tip of the last decade.
Speaking at a Nov. 20 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Phil McAlister, director of NASA’s industrial space division, said the agency wouldn’t jeopardize safety to fulfill a schedule, following the teachings from the industrial crew program. “I don’t feel like it is a safety risk in any respect,” he said. “It’s a schedule risk and we’re doing several things to mitigate that risk.”
One risk mitigation step is working with several firms, three of which — Axiom Space, Blue Origin and Voyager Space — have funded contracts or agreements with NASA to support initial work on their stations. Several others have unfunded Space Act Agreements to help their very own station plans, known by NASA as industrial LEO destinations or CLDs, or are working independently of NASA.
“Having multiple company on this stage of development, so that you’re not counting on a single provider, really increases the probability that any individual’s going to be ready on time,” he said.
There’s also some schedule flexibility within the transition between the ISS and industrial stations. McAlister noted there’s a two-year overlap currently projected between the beginning of business space station operations around 2028 and the retirement of the ISS in 2030. “Lower than that’s definitely feasible,” he said of that overlap period. “This provides us a little bit little bit of schedule margin.”
A 3rd option is to increase the ISS beyond 2030, which might depend upon the status of the ISS and willingness of ISS partners to proceed station operations. Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations, said in a Nov. 2 speech that ISS retirement was “not mandatory” in 2030 and that there may some flexibility in that date should industrial stations not be ready.
In a later statement, Bowersox reiterated that NASA’s current policy is to retire the ISS in 2030 but that the agency “also prepares for a wide range of scenarios” to make sure it could possibly proceed research in LEO. “The agency intends to keep up our continuous human presence in space for the good thing about humanity as we change into considered one of many shoppers in a thriving industrial marketplace in low Earth orbit.”
But McAlister said even that goal of a “continuous human presence” could possibly be reviewed. “If all of those mitigations fail, we might have a brief gap in LEO presence,” he said. “That may be bad and I don’t want one, but when CLDs weren’t ready, we may need to simply accept a niche. And, personally, I don’t think that might be the tip of the world.”
“A spot wouldn’t be great,” he said later within the meeting, “but I also don’t think it could be unrecoverable, either, especially if it was relatively short term.”
He added that flights by industrial crew vehicles, like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner, “could lessen the impact of a niche.” Those vehicles, he said, could possibly be equipped with research equipment and further consumables to enable 10-day missions for “meaningful research.”
Other vehicles in development, including SpaceX’s Starship, a crewed version of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser and a proposed Blue Origin crewed spacecraft known only as Space Vehicle, would also help fill any gap, he added.
Other agency officials on the meeting said it could be a number of years before they understand how likely it’s a industrial station can be ready by the tip of the last decade. “It’s really hard to rate it” now, said Angela Hart, NASA manager of the CLD program.
She said NASA wouldn’t have higher insight into industrial space station development schedules until after the agency awards what it calls Phase 2 contracts to certify those stations and buy services. NASA currently expects Phase 2 contracts to start in 2026.
“That first six months to a yr, once that contract is awarded, is where I feel we’ll have one of the best understanding of what our schedule is,” she said.
She added her program was working closely with the ISS program “to place some meat on that transition plan” from the ISS, including fallback options if industrial stations are usually not prone to be ready by the tip of the last decade. “A few of those key decision points are in ’26 and ’27.”
In one other presentation on the meeting, Robyn Gatens, ISS director at NASA Headquarters, said there’s some “timeline flexibility” for the transition, which is able to depend upon each the readiness of business space stations and availability of a deorbit vehicle for the ISS. NASA is currently reviewing proposals for a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, with a contract award expected in April 2024.
“So as to haven’t any gap, it could require some flexibility in that timeline,” she said. That’s “tricky,” she added, due to the lead time of three years to obtain additional cargo and crew transportation services for the ISS. “That introduces some challenges in that timeline flexibility.”